I can tell you that "I release my anger toward authority figures" is a potent and wise affirmation for me to work with - but right now the work on that needs to remain private. More to share in the course of time, I think.

However, these two:

I uncover and express my own personal genius

and

I affirm my oneness with the human community

are a beautiful pair.

It is the dance between these two, O Aquarius, that I am celebrating this month. As I sink deeper into the heart of my individuality, my connection with others can blossom in a mode of integrity, not surrender. For most my life so far this has not been obvious or natural, but the fruition is coming.

Madeline L'Engle has a phrase that has stuck with me (I'm not sure in what context): "making a virtue of your peculiarities". And that's how "personal genius" feels to me. In the heart of your heart, in your weird brokenness, in the wildly improbable folds of your thought and feeling and knowing, there is a presence profound and unique, and it needs to find expression.

And yet: it is just that uniqueness that is the basis for true connection. I don't think it means the world necessarily comes flocking to your door - that is only one very narrow mode of relating (not particularly familiar to me). No, our true selves are designed to make the connections we need to make, no more and no less. But through those connections, deep or wide as they may be, we experience oneness.

While in Japan, dazzled by Buddhist richness and diversity, I took to reading dense treatises on the history of Japanese religion. I learned that according to one theory all the flavors of Japanese Buddhism have their root in the Lotus Sutra. I don't know if that's true, but I have been working my way through it with the help of this very good guide by Nikkyo Niwano. In chapter 5 of the sutra there is a parable in which each human is envisioned as an individual plant with unique growing patterns, fruits, and flowers. The Buddha's wisdom is like the rain that falls on all the plants, stimulating each to come into its fullness of being in its own way. This same message, repeated throughout the Lotus Sutra, is so harmonious with our Aquarius full moon: we are each entirely unique; we are share the same dazzling radiance as our core essence. Geniuses in community.

And here's another aspect of the uniqueness: each of us has our own journey toward discovering the way we dance between individual brilliance and community harmony. The size of our family, the closeness of the city or town we grew up in, the nature of our schooling, our religious and ethnic heritage - along with all the karmic seeds represented in astrological configurations and genetics: in how many different ways do we learn what self-expression means, what togetherness means, and how we weave our way between them?

So that's worth a few weeks of reflection, and I invite you to join me as we bathe in the late-summer nights ruled by our Aquarius full moon.